The Little House
by grendels
Summary: And sometimes, when things get really bad, Isabelle can see who she is reflected in his eyes. Alec calls it a sixth sense, she just calls it love. /Lightcest, 6 part prompt!drabble series./
1. Sight

_Sight_

It's been awhile since her demons came to play.

They come to her in her sleep, wrapping around her, pinning her down and climbing through her nightgowns, though her skin, burrowing deep in her muscles and their eyes glowed purpleorangeblack behind her closed eyelids. She stopped seeing them when she was about ten, around the same time she began her warrior training and she learned that she could kill demons with a single flick of the golden whip Hodge had given her for Christmas.

But Hodge was gone now, the demons had got him and he was gone and everything changed and the demons come back and she barely even hears them as they creep across her floor and the first one climbs onto the bed and it's eyes glint and she triestriestries to scream and struggle but this is dreamworld, but it's not her dreamworld because she can't scream or struggle and someone took her voice and the bed splits open and she falls and the demons follow and they coil around her and squeeze and she's suffocating and shrieking and the hole she is falling down is quite long and the demons will kill her before she hits the bottom and she screams again and again and again and the demons squeeze tighter and she couldn't fight them off when she was ten and she can't fight them off when she's sixteen either and and and and and-

"it'sokayit'sokayit'sokay." Someone's holding her and the nightmare falls away and she's pulled back up into her own bed, away from her dreamland and back in the real world and everything spins around her in painful clarity. Her hair is stuck to her forehead and the back of her neck with sweat and she gasps and reaches out and someone's arms are around her and its Alec, her brother, her savior. Burrowing into his arms, she closes her eyes and, this time, there are no monsters hiding behind them. Alec makes it safe, Alec makes it all better.

It takes some time before the shaking stops, before her muscles stop jumping, pulling away under her skin and she panics for a second and claws at her arms because what if the demons are still there but Alec grabs her wrists and smoothes down her hair and whispers "Stopstop, its okay. I'm here."

He's there. The demons are there too, the sound of their toothy smiles pounding against the back of her mind but it doesn't matter because he's there.

_He's here._

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A/n: Well, yeah. I wrote this while slogging through the filler chapter from hell for Deus Ex. :/ I sorta like it. Next part should be up soon! –enter standard review whore here because, unlike usually, I actually like this fic-


	2. Smell

_Smell_

He leaves.

It's only temporary, he insists. Just a month long temp job in Alicante, to see how he likes it. A month. He says it like it's no big deal. The minute he tells her, Isabelle's mind begins to click and tick and tock. The month is 30 days. 720 hours. 43,200 minutes. Unbearable.

(Knock it off) she scolds herself mentally. She needs to stop acting like a goddamn little girl. He's her brother, not her boyfriend.

They hug and he waves and picks up his bags and, just like that, he's gone. For a whole month. (Stop it.)

It's lonely in the right wing of the house without him. The living quarters of the Lightwoods pretty much consisted of one long hallway, with Max, Jace and their parents' bedrooms being off farthest to the left, then four rooms of general use and then, finally, her and Alec's room. It's an awful lot of space for a girl to govern by herself.

The first night is by far the worse because her dreams (nightmares?) are back and choking and squeezing and killing her and he's not there to hold her and calm her down and she wakes up with the taste of bile in her mouth and all her sheets kicked off her bed and long red welts running down her arms where she tried to scratch the demons out from under her skin.

Red numbers on her clock flash 3:47 A.M. and there's no getting back to sleep now, not after what haunts her under the covers. So she gets up and out of her room (away from the dreams) and pads down to his, opening the door as quietly as she can. She must have knocked over sixteen different containers on his dresser, groping for the one she needs, but when she finds it, none of that even matters.

The bottle is small and blue and the name of the company is etched on the front with gold, the words sparkling in the dim light. His cologne that he bought in Alicante three years prior. It's always amazed her how he's managed to make such a small amount last so long.

There's not much left in the bottle, though. A thin line of liquid hovers along the bottom of the glass when she holds it up to the light. But it's enough. She slips back into her room and unscrews the cap, trying to make as little noise as possible, even though she knows her parents can't hear her all the way down the corridor.

Alec would hurt her if he saw what she was doing, if he saw her pouring his cologne all over her pillow and throwing away the bottle. He is going to hurt her once he finds out that she wasted it but it doesn't matter because she's alone and it's dark and she's scared.

(Stop being such a baby!)

Something's telling her to straighten her shoulders and pull her chin up and stop being such a girl, but another part, the part that she likes a whole lot better, is telling her to just admit to the fact that she depends on him. (It's not a crime to need someone.)

Clasping the pillow to her face, she inhales and breathes in the scent, his scent and the demons peel away and, for the first time in a very long while, she sleeps peacefully.

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A/N: Dear god, the first draft of this chapter was terrible. Isabelle started acting like Bella and..gah, it made me gag. I hope I got rid of it, though. Lyddie informed me that Isabelle's becoming obsessed with Alec in a very unhealthy way, which was something that brought me joy because that's exactly what's *supposed* to happen. Well -enter another standard review whore here-. Thanks!


	3. Touch

**A/N: I actually like this chapter! Yay AxI! -insert moar review whoring here-**

* * *

Touch

The dreams come in fragments at first. They seep through his subconscious and appear in flashes and pulses. A picture, a phrase, a feeling, all flickering around his mind while he sleeps.

He's had dreams like this before- dreams that leave him gasping and shuddering and tense between his hips when he wakes up, but there's something different about these ones, something different and strange that leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

It's hardly a gradual realization when he finally figures it out one lazy Sunday morning _(well, can two A.M really count as the morning?)_. He peels away from yet another dream and recalls through the hazy fog of sleep that whoever he keeps dreaming about had black hair. Long, thick black hair. His first thought is Magnus, but it can't be him because Alec remembers eyes, eyes that aren't hazel or catlike, eyes that are wide and innocent and deliriously brown.

And then it hits him. Just like that, he knows. His hand flies to his mouth and he doubles over and, dear god, he's going to throw up and his heart's beating like crazy against his ribcage and his mind is racing, tripping over itself in a mad effort to sort this out and it's a steady stream of words, pounding along- _(nononothernotisabellecant'beisabellesistersistersistermagnusjaceboyssistermagnusnosistersistersisternosister_isabelle_.)_

It's a mistake; it has to be a mistake. He's jumping to conclusions too soon. The person in his dreams is not Isabelle, not his sister because he's not like that, he's her brother, he doesn't think about her that way. She's his sister, his tiny little _(beautiful)_ waif of a sister who he loves, but not like that. That's enough to calm himself down and it takes everything he has to keep the constant frame of mind that he's not lying, that this is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth _(so help him, Angel.)_

Then why can't he get it out of his head? The dreams come back, of course, painful and vivid inside his mind, the one place he can't escape, but he ignores them, brushes them off as nothing because that's just what they are. Nothing. But his exchanges with Isabelle are becoming few and far between, as awkward as hell. She'll give him a look, part her lips a certain way and everything, the dreams and the fragments and the desperate, hollow aching between his hips all come rushing back and he's afraid it'll show, that she'll know about it and he's pretty certain that if she ever does find out, she'll never want to be within thirty feet of him again.

On the plus side, she's stopped having those nightmares, which is a good for both of them. She doesn't have to go through whatever hell she had been night after night, the hell he only knows bits and pieces about from her frantic mutterings when he wakes her up _(ohgoddemonsdemonscrawlingupmyskininmyeyesinmyhairinsidemegetthemoffgetthemoffblackblackdarknessfallinggetoffgetoutgoawaygoawaygoaway.) _and he doesn't have to deal with the surge of new, unwanted feelings that would surely accompany her gripping him tight enough to choke, her hands clinging to his shoulder, her muscles jumping and shivering under her skin, her breath- loud and jagged- in his ear.

Out with nightmares for one sibling, in with ones of a completely different kind for the other.

The dreams get longer and longer, no longer fragments but full, torturous hallucinations that haunt him. More and more detailed till he can swear that someone is actually touching him, that his lips are really pressed against someone's skin. The worst of them come when he's really exhausted- he can never remember how they start out but they end up the same. His skin on hers, kissing her hard, her hands tangled in his hair, her hips moving skillfully against him, both of them gasping for air.

The most horrible part is right after he wakes up and he wishes he could go back.

It's enough to make him wish he had never known her at all.


End file.
